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Scribus 1.0 released
| From: | Peter Linnell <scribusdocs@atlantictechsolutions.com> | |
| To: | lwn@lwn.net | |
| Subject: | GPL DTP application Scribus 1.0 is released | |
| Date: | 15 Jul 2003 18:50:01 -0400 |
07:14:2003
News Item for Immediate Release
Programmer Franz Schmid is pleased to announce the release of Scribus
1.0 - Linux Desktop Publishing. Two years in development and available
in 17 languages, Scribus represents the first open source DTP
application capable of generating professional "press-ready" results.
Among the major features of Scribus:
A modern user friendly interface developed with Qt. Scribus can run on
Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, BSD and soon Mac OSX. An experimental version
running on Cygwin and Windows 2000 is in testing.
Unicode support including support for right to left scripts.
Can export CMYK separations and "press-ready" PDF including PDF 1.4
features such as transparency.
The only DTP application to create fully ISO compliant PDF/X-3 files.
A powerful PDF export engine capable of creating fully interactive PDF
forms, presentation effects and encrypted PDF.
ICC color management via the littlecms color management engine.
Powerful cross-platform Python Scripting language extending Scribus
functions and automating tasks, as well as calling external applications
within Scribus.
Uses XML as a native file format. The Scribus XML format has been fully
documented.
The Scribus Team:
Programming / Original Author Franz Schmid Franz.Schmid at
altmuehlnet.de
Code Review and API Documentation Paul F. Johnson paulf.johnson at
ukonline.co.uk
English Documentation and Testing Peter Linnell scribusdocs at
atlantictechsolutions.com
Many contributions and translations from users.
Scribus Home Page: http://web2.altmuehlnet.de/fschmid/ and mirrored at:
http://scribus.planetmirror.com
On line documentation and specs:
http://www.atlantictechsolutions.com/scribusdocs/ and mirrored at:
http://home.comcast.net/~scribusdocs/
-30-
(Log in to post comments)
The first?
Posted Jul 16, 2003 17:40 UTC (Wed) by wjhenney (guest, #11768) [Link]
"Scribus represents the first open source DTP application capable of generating professional "press-ready" results."Hmm, so LaTeX, ConTeXt, et al. don't count? Strange.
The first?
Posted Jul 16, 2003 17:52 UTC (Wed) by dr_lha (guest, #86) [Link]
I don't know what ConTeXt is, but LaTeX (therefore TeX) are typesetting languages, not DTP. DTP software is all about laying out things on a page how you would like to see them, with great control over the position of objects; with TeX the software makes the decisions for you in terms of layout, using complex typesetting rules (which can often mean if you have a specific layout in mind that breaks these rules you have to battle TeX to get it to do what you want). Both programs produce professional output, but represent very opposite ends of the publishing field, with word processors somewhere between the two.
The first?
Posted Jul 17, 2003 7:16 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
With TeX, *you* make the decision as to the position of every drop of ink. Plain TeX takes some of the grunt work off your hands, but leaves you with most of it. LaTeX is the one that tries to do everything for you.But regardless, I'll agree; TeX is not a DTP application. It's a reasonably good *backend* to DTP applications, though.
The first?
Posted Jul 16, 2003 18:02 UTC (Wed) by utidjian (subscriber, #444) [Link]
Well yes, as a GUI DTP app it is the first that I have seen. LaTeX et al, are hardly DTP apps. I have been using the excellent LyX (http://www.lyx.org) for years. LyX is, IMHO, the best document processing application for creating scientific documents that are "press-ready" for journals or just local use. It doesn't require any LaTeX or TeX knowledge at all... but if you know the TeX language you can put it to good use with LyX.Scribus now fills in the problem of having a DTP app on par with Quark. There are things that Quark (and similar programs from Adobe) are good for that LaTeX and LyX and Open Office etc... just can't do. Scribus is a niche application. As with Quark it won't be on everyones desktop. It is not a general purpose word processor.
-DU-...etc...
What does it mean to be press ready?
Posted Jul 16, 2003 19:22 UTC (Wed) by jmalcolm (guest, #8876) [Link]
Hello,I am not deeply familiar with any of the Tex stuff but while it may be professional I am not sure that it is press ready. A quick look at Scribus sees that it handles concepts like spreads that are only important if you want to print off on a printing press. It also handles colour nicely by having native knowledge of CMYK colour spaces and ICC profiles. The fact that it can save files as PDF/X3 and that it uses it's own PostScript driver internally also speak well of it's ability to integrate well into prepress environments.
This is truly intended to be a competitor to Quark Xpress, Adobe InDesign, and the like. I would expect that most Tex output that becomes books in a store would go through a program like this at some point even if the author did not know it.
Justin Malcolm
What does it mean to be press ready?
Posted Jul 16, 2003 20:17 UTC (Wed) by dr_lha (guest, #86) [Link]
I am not deeply familiar with any of the Tex stuff but while it may be professional I am not sure that it is press ready.TeX is perfectly capable of producing press ready copy, and I have seen many books typeset with TeX and have myself had articles published directly from my LaTeX source. In my experience the LaTeX output from my laser printer has been identical to what was published. TeX has a unix style design (i.e. lots of small programs to do one big job), where I would use "dvips" to create postscript for printing on my laser printer from TeX's output, a professional publisher would use a different program to produce output for a printing press,for producing photo-ready copy or galley proofs.
What TeX is good at is producing textbook style typesetting with excellent support for equations, mostly in black and white (so things like colour seperation is not an issue). What it isn't good at is flashy colourful magazine or newspaper style layouts which is where DTP software like Quark Xpress rules the roost.
What does it mean to be press ready?
Posted Jul 16, 2003 20:39 UTC (Wed) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
Generally I believe "press-ready" is meant to convey that the product is capable of producing CMYK separations, handling trapping, spot color plates, and things like this. TeX, as wonderful as it is, doesn't do this.
Yes, TeX and associates can do all that stuff
Posted Jul 16, 2003 23:14 UTC (Wed) by wjhenney (guest, #11768) [Link]
See, for example http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/papers/color.pdf
What does it mean to be press ready?
Posted Jul 16, 2003 20:28 UTC (Wed) by andrel (guest, #5166) [Link]
TeX and LaTeX are regularly used to produce camera-ready output for scientific manuscripts. There is no need for the added expense of a page layout program, and the academic publishers who ask for TeX are not retypsetting the book using another program. Some journal publishers (AMS comes to mind) also work directly from LaTeX because the hardcopy and web editions are easy to produce from the same source file.
More TeX advocacy
Posted Jul 17, 2003 3:17 UTC (Thu) by wjhenney (guest, #11768) [Link]
Just to make up for the brevity of my initial post...
Firstly, I'm sure that Scribus is a great program. I wish it and its authors the greatest success. My only gripe was with the advertising copy and the implied dismissal of the TeX universe.
There seem to be various respects in which Scribus wins over the TeX family. For example pdfTeX does not generate fully PDF/X-3 compliant output the last time I looked (but someone is working on it, so that info may be out of date). Also, although it is pretty easy in LaTeX to have funny-shaped paragraphs dotted over the page, flowing a paragraph through various disjointed boxes is notoriously difficult to do in LaTeX, making it not really a suitable tool for say magazine layout. Scribus' integration of color management also looks promising. On the other hand, many of the comments in response to my initial post betray a lack of appreciation of what TeX in the broadest sense is capable of. There is a showcase of documents prepared with TeX, many of which are far from the kinds of scientific/mathematical works that TeX is famous for (and many of which are not so far....)
(dr_lha) What TeX is good at is producing textbook style typesetting with excellent support for equations, mostly in black and white
Yes, this is what TeX is famous for but that doesn't mean it can't do the other stuff. All manner of color separation, trapping, etc. can be handled easily.
(jmalcolm) I would expect that most Tex output that becomes books in a store would go through a program like this at some point even if the author did not know it.
This may well be the case but I think that just reflects the mindset of a typical print shop, rather than any intrinsic limitations of TeX-based solutions. Remember, most Windows users are incapable of sending a PS file to a laser printer without first loading it into some &#!?% program or other (although I'm sure that no LWN-reading Windows users fall into that category).
(dr_lha) LaTeX (therefore TeX) are typesetting languages, not DTP. DTP software is all about laying out things on a page how you would like to see them, with great control over the position of objects
(utidjian) Well yes, as a GUI DTP app it is the first that I have seen. LaTeX et al, are hardly DTP apps.
I suppose that for some suitable definition of DTP app, then you are right that LaTeX is not one :) Seriously though, I think that if `DTP' is supposed to signify more than just a sociological group or a market segment for software vendors then it would have to include LaTeX. Is it a requirement that a DTP app have a GUI? LaTeX has many, including LyX as you mention, but in my opinion the best is emacs :). I would venture that TeX-the-program is `just' a typesetting language, LaTeX-the-program is `just' a TeX-based document-design/markup language, but that TeX/LaTeX/etc-the-system most definitively is functionally equivalent to a DTP app. It sure don't look like Quark or InDesign but I'd say that the output is generally just as "professional" and "press-ready" (in the right hands, of course). Interestingly, the Wikipedia entry for LaTeX gives equal billing to `typesetting' and `DTP' in the first paragraph, so at least one other person in the world agrees with me.
(dr_lha) with TeX the software makes the decisions for you in terms of layout, using complex typesetting rules (which can often mean if you have a specific layout in mind that breaks these rules you have to battle TeX to get it to do what you want).
It is true that LaTeX philosophy is generally to discourage user-intervention in the physical layout on the page. This has obvious advantages when you are writing, say, a novel or a scientific paper. However, if you want "great control over the position of objects" then all the facilities are there. Check out, for example, the pstricks package.
For those who are interested, ConTeXt is a newer TeX-based typesetting system, aimed specifically at high-end publishing and with an even stronger claim than LaTeX to DTP-hood. I haven't used it for any serious work but it seems to be very well integrated (not really an accusation that can be leveled at LaTeX) and, if the docs are anything to go by, is well-suited to producing the flashier stuff that LaTeX has traditionally abjured (for instance, you can easily embed MathML, MetaPost, and JavaScript in your documents).
Best Wishes,
Will Henney
More TeX advocacy
Posted Jul 17, 2003 6:36 UTC (Thu) by dr_lha (guest, #86) [Link]
I think you make some interesting points here - but it does go back to the fact that no matter what Wikipedia says, nobody in the publishing world considered LaTeX to be a DTP program. I'll admit that I thought about this, is: LaTeX is a program that runs on a 'D'esk'T'op computer and can be used for 'P'ublishing, so why isn't it a DTP program? Well the answer lies in what you said:"..I think that if `DTP' is supposed to signify more than just a sociological group or a market segment for software vendors.."
The fact is that it isn't supposed to signify any more. Usage of the phrase DTP is intrinsically linked to programs like Quark Xpress. Consider "Word Processor", I would consider MS Word, OpenOffice Writer and Abiword to be "Word Processors", but not Emacs. How come? Emacs can be used to "process words" after all. Social context is everything here, the meaning of these two words have transcended their literal meaning, to having a meaning that includes a fairly narrow range of software. The same is true of "DTP".
Therefore LaTeX is not a DTP program. :-)
The social construction of DTP
Posted Jul 17, 2003 15:43 UTC (Thu) by wjhenney (guest, #11768) [Link]
At the risk of turning into a bore, I'll rise to the bait here...
nobody in the publishing world considered LaTeX to be a DTP program
and until very recently nobody considered Linux to be a desktop operating system, despite the fact that it has been on my desktop for a decade :)
Of course you are right that the concept `DTP', as commonly used, is a social construct that is "intrinsically linked to programs like Quark Xpress." I was just hoping that people in the free-software world could see through all that marketing BS, and would adopt a more `empirical' (or at the very least `instrumental') definition.
Your analogy with Emacs vs Word Processors is interesting, but IMO flawed. Emacs is not a Word Processor because it is not designed to fulfil (many) of the functions of a Word Processor (typesetting simple letters, reports, etc.) and AFAIK nobody uses it for such tasks. On the other hand, TeX-based systems are designed to fulfill the same functions as `DTP apps' (among many others) and are used by at least some people to do so. I think a more apt analogy would be with Emacs vs IDEs. Is Emacs an IDE? A typical MS Visual Studio user might not think so but I certainly do. It integrates any compiler/debugger you care to mention, has syntax highlighting and class browsing for all languages under the sun, etc. Go by the smell, not by the looks :)
Cheers
Will
Scribus 1.0 released
Posted Jul 17, 2003 16:09 UTC (Thu) by chohman (guest, #5519) [Link]
This is an interesting thread, and serves to illustrate, for me at least, one of the developing(?) "conficts" in the FLOSS world.One one hand are those who argue that existing software (in this case LaTex) can do all the things a new package can.
One the other, those who feel that if a new package more closely emulates a popular Windows package, it's a good thing.
I would hazard that both positions have merit. As Linux and friends become more popular, the March of the Marketing Departments will grow - this is unfortunate, but perhaps unavoidable.
Scribus 1.0 released
Posted Jul 17, 2003 17:12 UTC (Thu) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
A small point... I feel that a package deserves to be called a DTP package if it was designed to accomplish "desktop publishing" as the term is generally understood. DTP was basically invented as a category by people using Aldus PageMaker on Mac OS in the mid-to-late 80s, and so that form of application, with its associated UI traditions, is what I would use as a benchmark for deciding what should be called a "DTP application". TeX and its associated addons just don't qualify, despite the fact that they can produce somewhat equivalent (and in some cases, better) output. The operator experience is the central thing here, since the end user of the output really doesn't care what package created it. People who have worked on PageMaker, QuarkXPress, InDesign, etc. and got the workflow under their fingers just think a completely different way than the way TeX works. Don't get me wrong--I'm a big fan of Don Knuth and his amazing work (and everyone else that contributes to it) but there is a large separation between the two mindsets. Scribus belongs to the visual DTP camp, like PM, XPress, and InDesign.
Scribus 1.0 released
Posted Jul 17, 2003 22:16 UTC (Thu) by WillAdams (guest, #13002) [Link]
The problem with Scribus though is it doesn't really extend DTP capabilities beyond what'savailable elsewhere---okay, it's free, it's open source, and it's got an XML fileformat---all
well and good, but the H&J seems to be the classic old brain-dead one-line at a time, one
line can be loose and the next tight, the UI doesn't strike me as interesting or innovative
from what I can tell of the screen shots---which brings me to the biggest problem, the last
time I tried to run this, it segfaulted when I tried to load it.
Anyone running this new version in Mac OS X yet?
I'd be more inclined to try again if this offered H&J as good as pdfTeX (HZ algorithm /
margin-kerning) and a UI which is an improvement on Adobe InDesign (that shouldn't be
that hard---I loathe ID's UI and mislike even more the UI of the program which it's based
on, Adobe Illustrator)
William
Scribus 1.0 released
Posted Jul 18, 2003 22:13 UTC (Fri) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link]
I agree, Scribus does very much feel its age (in other words, a first release). In fact, on one machine I haven't been able to get it to actually put any text into a text box--nothing comes out when I create a text box and then choose the edit tool and type. It's very Quark-ish in its appearance too, from my POV. (That's not a good thing.) I actually rather like the InDesign UI... but to each its own, eh?In summary, equaling InDesign 2 or Quark 6 is a tall order for anyone, considering the large amount of history and cash behind those two applications. The progress so far with Scribus is very much laudable and appreciated. :-)